Path of the Secular Humanist: Why is there something rather than nothing?

"We are citizens of the Universe and are excited by discoveries still to be made in the Cosmos." — Paul Kurtz

Last month, Jennifer Doudna, PhD, was acknowledged for her discovery of the tool
for gene editing called CRISPR, a technique with great potential to eradicate disease and feed the hungry.

As promised, three other Persons of the Year will be celebrated this month: Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Lawrence Krauss.

The annual "CSI-CON" 2017 meeting was held in Las Vegas, Nevada, this past October. This meeting is a conference dedicated to science and skeptical inquiry. Anyone interested in CSI-CON 2018 should feel free to contact me at rwhempstead3@yahoo.com for details of the next conference. During the 2017 CSI-CON, attendees were able to learn from Dawkins and Krauss in person.

Richard Dawkins, PhD, is a giant intellect and prolific author of "Evolutionary Biology." He and his contemporaries such as Jerry Coyne, PhD (author of "Faith vs. Fact") and Doudna (author of "A Crack in Creation") stand on the shoulders of giants from days gone by like Watson, Crick and Charles Darwin. Dawkins has done for evolutionary biology what the late Carl Sagan did for cosmology: Both have made learning science fun (while accurately debunking pseudoscience, hucksterism and supernaturalism).

Dawkins told us: "Scientists, unlike politicians and supernaturalists, can take pleasure in being wrong. A politician or supernaturalist who changes his mind is accused of flip-flopping. Scientists, on the whole, prefer to see their ideas vindicated, but an occasional reversal gains respect, especially when graciously acknowledged. I have never heard of a scientist being maligned as a flip-flopper."

Instead of keeping Jesus (or Mohammed or Moses) in the science classroom, we might do much better if we added Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" or his classic "The God Delusion" to basic science requirements in our schools. Alternatively, we could seek "equal time" in tax-exempt church Sunday school bible study sessions to teach children the facts contrasted to superstitious faith.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, PhD, is the director of The Hayden Space Museum in New York City. This brilliant African-American scientist carries on his mentor Carl Sagan's abilities to make cosmology understandable and entertaining. His short book "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry" culminates with his reflections on the cosmic perspective. This is a perspective which comes from science, is humble and spiritual but not religious. It has no need for a personal creator, god or gods. At the Hayden Museum, one can amble down a spiral walkway which begins with the Big Bang 13.72 billion years ago (which is accurate to the fourth significant figure!) and see the evolution of the stars and chemical elements which comprise everything, including you! We humans are indeed made of stardust.

At the CSI-CON 2017 meeting, I was able to hear a presentation by Lawrence Krauss concerning our star, the sun. Dr. Krauss is a living mix of Einstein, Feynman and Sagan rolled into one great physicist. He lives right next door at Arizona State University and is the director of the Origins Project (check it out at PO Box 87192, Tempe AZ, 85287-1902).

If you have a humanist life stance as do I, you will likely have some supernaturalist ask you, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Whereas biology was always the hunting ground for natural theologians to attack science — until Darwin chased them off — these same theologians then romped off into the realm of astrophysics and the origins of the universe in a desperate attempt to legitimize wish-thinking. And there they ran into Krauss who has chased them off once again, leaving them nowhere to go.

In Krauss' masterpiece, "A Universe from Nothing," he reminds us that subatomic particles flicker in and out of existence; nothing is unstable; and nothing is something. Supernaturalists will claim we "know" nothing without their "other ways of knowing" like revealed truth. Krauss would counter that theologians understand absolutely nothing and cannot explain or accept anything. So the answer to the question is nothing IS something and requires no personal creator, god or gods to exist. Do you think this is cheerless and bleak? Too bad. Reality does not owe us some sort of consolation and some of us find it extremely liberating compared with Dark Age dogmas and doctrines with absolutely no credible evidence.

Worth putting to memory is the following succinct quote attributed to deGrasse Tyson: "Science doesn't care what you believe. The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."

Dr. Richard W. Hempstead has been in private practice in dermatology in Las Cruces since 1984.